I love, love, love the Elizabethan period!  The music, the clothes, the houses, the sense of adventure and discovery, the poetry—it’s all so exciting.  Writing the Kate Haywood Mysteries lets me live in the time period for a few hours every day, see it through Kate’s eyes, talk to Queen Elizabeth, sweep around in farthingales and ruffs—and then come back to my own cozy house, with running water and electricity.  The best of both worlds! My love of the Elizabethan era started when I was about ten years old, and found a magical box full of paperbacks at my grandmother’s house one summer.  That box was full of wonders, and started me on a lifelong love of reading and history.  Jane Austen’s Emma; Jane Eyre;  Little Women; 1960s Harlequins set in mysterious places with names like Cornwall, where young, innocent secretaries encountered dark, brooding millionaires; Victoria Holt Gothics with crumbling castles and dark, brooding dukes (who may or may not have killed their wives).  These treasures kept me gloriously busy for weeks. One of the best finds was a Barbara Cartland story called Elizabethan Lover.  I was no newcomer to Cartland novels by then.  My grandmother had an endless supply…

The heroine of my new historical novel, EARLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN, isn’t your typical Regency heroine. Marlowe is a thief who grew up in the slums of London and runs with a gang called the Covent Garden Cubs. “Cub” is a slang term for a young thief. When she’s suddenly mistaken for the long lost daughter of a marquess, she has a lot to learn in order to fit in with her “betters.” But what Marlowe learns is that sometimes street smarts are good for more than just survival. In fact, those lessons she learned on the street, come in handy when she’s introduced into Society. Lesson #1: Trust no one. Growing up in the rookery of Covent Garden, Marlowe quickly learned not to trust anyone. One false move, and she could end up with a knife in her back. Literally. Even the Bow Street Runners, the police of the era, weren’t above using unsuspecting cubs for financial gain and then abandoning them to face time in prison or hang for their crimes. So when Marlowe meets the Earl of Dane, she doesn’t trust him or anyone in his family. Dane might claim to want to help her,…

One of the biggest challenges I faced in making the leap from my genteel Georgian set historical romances to the rough and tumble world of rodeo was to find the right voices for my characters. My answer to that dilemma was to spend time with the real deal. I was fortunate to make two extended research trips to Montana and Wyoming for a hefty dose of genuine cowboy where I got my characters’ voices straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth. Although ROUGH RIDER is at times raw, gritty and a little coarse, it’s also very realistic in the characters, situations, and dialogue peppered with western witticisms and dry cowboy humor. Excerpt from ROUGH RIDER Grady Garrison leaned over from his perch on the adjoining pen and spat a wad of dip. “Good thing pretty boy scored so high on the broncs cause he sure as shit won’t make the cut on the bulls.” “That so?” Dirk paused in prepping his rope, his ice blue eyes meeting Grady’s for only a second. “Funny, as I recall it just last week in Red Lodge I made the whistle while your ass hit the dirt.” He went back to work, crushing the lump…

I have been a quilter for many years and enjoyed making an intricate, scrappy beauty more than any other hobby. Until I began to write. Now here was a craft I dearly loved. But wait, I loved quilting, too. In fact, I couldn’t decide which I liked better. Writing or quilting? Quilting or writing? Both of them held me captive. I simply had to quilt. And write. Combining the two crafts in my new book, A Stitch in Crime, I wrote a whodunit set around a quilt show with a no-show judge and a stolen, legacy quilt. And I thought of five ways the two pursuits are very much alike. 1. They have a similar starting point. Writing: I wanted to write a mystery, but what kind? A police procedural? Locked room/puzzle mystery? Hard-boiled detective? I decided on a cozy – which has been defined as “cats & quilts and not a lot of blood.” Now I had the direction I needed to move forward. Quilting: I wanted to make a quilt, but what kind? A bed cover? A wall hanging? A miniature? A table runner or Christmas tree skirt? I decided on a blanket-type, something the family could use…

Want to win a copy of PERFECT KIND OF TROUBLE by Chelsea Fine? Join in our scavenger hunt! Each participating blog will feature a letter in their post—collect all the letters to find out the secret word. If you’re just joining in, be sure to head to Cocktails and Books for the first letter. This post is brought to you by the letter U. Look for the next letter at Vilma’s Book Blog.  Once you’ve got the word, head on over to Chelsea Fine’s website to get your book!* Fresh Fiction wishes you all the best on today’s scavenger hunt! Find out more about PERFECT KIND OF TROUBLE and read the excerpt below, and happy hunting! Excerpt from PERFECT KIND OF TROUBLE I reach Mr. Perkins’s office and quickly park before climbing out of the car in my high heels. The inheritance really could be only twenty dollars—or less—and spending an afternoon chained to Daren Ackwood to find it could be a complete waste of time, not to mention horribly awkward given our romantic encounter last night, but it’s worth a shot. Because if it turns out to be a substantial amount of money, everything could change. Not only could I go…

I’m getting excited! My first ebook novella written and published by me, ZONE OF FIRE (Shadow Warriors series) is getting birthed right now 🙂 I have owned a publishing company, Blue Turtle Publishing, for thirty years. Before moving into being an Indie fiction author and publishing my books as Lindsay McKenna, I cut my teeth on publishing my own nonfiction books. I’ve published Medical Astrology, Path of the Mystic, and Homeopathy for Epidemics, among others. Now, I’m stretching my publisher wings to start including ebooks written by me under my Lindsay McKenna pseudonym. Same great stories, same quality of writing, just a different publisher. In this case: me. Which is terrific! I get into all aspects of publishing, which I’m very familiar with. I have a production team that consists of an editor, copy editor, proof reader, graphic artist, back cover copy writer, and formatter. We get ISBN numbers for each book, plus they are copyrighted before they are ever formatted and published. On December 11th, ZONE OF FIRE was uploaded to Amazon from Blue Turtle Publishing. The best news is it is .99 cents for my 11,000 word novella. ZONE OF FIRE is the epilogue to NEVER SURRENDER (HQN,…

Meet the Bachelors at the Montana Born Auction! BOUND TO THE BACHELOR by Sarah Mayberry Your date with Marietta local Beau Bennett includes a day on the slopes at Big Sky Resort, complete with a sumptuous meal in the Resort’s fanciest fine dining restaurant and door-to-door transport. Dig deep to secure the attentions of one of Montana’s most eligible – and elusive – bachelors. Lily Taylor knows Beau Bennett dislikes her, but that won’t stop her from asking him to volunteer for the Bachelor Auction she’s organized to help her friend Molly provide for her tragically injured son, Josh. If Beau’s gorgeous face, piercing blue eyes and chiseled body inspires the women of Marietta to dig into their pockets for a good cause, then Lily will do whatever it takes to secure his participation. Beau Bennett isn’t sure how he wound up on the auction block being eyed up by hundreds of eager women, but he knows who to blame for it – Lily Taylor, the sexy, distracting, off-limits best friend of his kid sister. As far as he’s concerned, the sooner this nightmare is over, the better. The last thing either of them expects is for Lily to wind…

For the FOR KEEPS blog tour, Fresh Fiction asked Rachel Lacey to list her top 5 favorite sweet and sexy cowboys from TV, books, or movies. Here is what she had to say! 1. I adore all of Lori Wilde‘s cowboy heroes, but sexy Rafferty Jones in A COWBOY FOR CHRISTMAS really makes me swoon. He’s the perfect blend of macho and tender. 2. Slate Calhoun in Katie Lane‘s GOING COWBOY CRAZY is another cowboy romance favorite of mine. 3. Luke Perry in Eight Seconds – holy hotness! 4. One of my childhood favorites is “Little Joe” aka Michael Landon from Bonanza. Charming and sexy 🙂 5. John Wayne – but of course! Get to know Rachel’s own sexy cowboy TJ Jameson in FOR KEEPS, on sale today! About FOR KEEPS A summer fling…or something more? Merry Atwater would do just about anything to save her dog rescue – even if it means working with the most stubborn man on the planet. It’s hard to avoid the sparks that fly with TJ Jameson, the ruggedly sexy cowboy in charge of the children’s camp where she’s just taken an animal therapy job. But commitment is not Merry’s style, and TJ clearly wants more…

There’s something inherently sexy about poker. Unlike many forms of gambling, poker requires skill, knowledge, and instinct. You need confidence to pull it off, and confidence is always a turn-on. Levi Hardy, the hero of IN THE CARDS, uses his poker skills to change his life. His con artist father introduced him to the game in grade school. Then, while living on the run with his dad, time and practice honed Levi’s skills. Good thing, too, since his father’s lifestyle robbed him of a proper education. But Levi ultimately uses his intelligence, discipline, and determination to break away from his dad and build a stable life for himself. How? Poker tournaments, of course. If that sounds far-fetched, consider the fact that twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Robl’s lifetime poker earnings are already approaching four million dollars, while forty-year-old Daniel Negreanu has earned thirty million at the tables. Luckily, like those real players, Levi is exceptional. Once he banks a few million dollars, he leaves Vegas and moves to Malibu, which is where he runs into Lindsey for the second time in his life. Then the girl with a big heart melts his cynical one, and falling in love teaches him a thing or…

Meeting a guy is so dad-gum complicated. You have to go to a bar, go to church, or go to your computer and fill out a form. And then, once you do manage to go out, your date wants—no, expects—to stay over. Why can’t it be like it was in the olden days? Simple, straight forward and, well, romantic. But after a little investigation, I found it wasn’t quite as easy to meet a guy “back in the day” as I thought. Your parents had to know his parents. He had to be attending the “right” church. He had to have a livelihood. He had to have a sterling reputation. And that was just to meet him. Once you’d been introduced, there were a bazillion little rules to adhere to. He had to remove his glove before shaking your hand. He was to remove his hat with the hand farthest from you. He had to wait for you to recognize him first on the street before he was allowed to greet you. When you got past the introduction, there were rules for conversing. He was not to use a classical quotation before you unless he knew, with absolute certainty, by…